Female ejaculation is a feminist issue...

[SolidGoldBrass]

Especially in the light of the porn laws. Anway, this is a good article on the topic, what does everyone else think?

I'm a sexological bodyworker, so I do have a certain knowledge about this.

tina

Don't hold back. What if it is wee? It doesn't really matter. It doesn't seem like it or feel like it. If you hold back on that, you won't get the orgasm and what's the point in that? Carry on and enjoy the love juice whatever it is!

Lurcio But the thing I find interesting is the emphasis within certain circles of trying to persuade women that their orgasms are not good enough the way they are.

and:

we need to be able to discuss these things without having accusations of "puritanism" and "prudery" thrown around

Great posts but these comments are especially great.

Buffy - As a sexological bodyworker, I coach people and groups around sex and sexuality, and I work hands-on with individuals and couples to address issues and blocks to pleasure, to address genital scarring and trauma, to educate them about their bodies and what turns them on, to educate about boundaries and consent, and to increase their connection to their bodies and their eroticism.

As an addendum: I am clothed, they are not; I am gloved; touch is one-way only, or clients touch themselves.

It's a relatively new profession - in the UK at least. And much needed, imo.

I have seen quite a lot of cunnilingus in porn (used to review porn DVDs for magazines) so it simply isn't true to say that it doesn't happen.

I don’t know what style of porn you reviewed but the only porn it would be in commonly is porn produced specifically for women or hand picked of being greater interest to women. Even mainstream porn with female only actors generally lacks cunnilingus, instead focused on toy use for a male audience.

Generally, even among people who accept the idea that female ejaculation exists, there is an acceptance that not every female (cis-female, to be absolutely clear and avoid any sidetracking) does ejaculate.

Regardless of what its made of, yes it does exist. Its also very rare so saying there is 'an acceptance that not every female does it' is a bit like saying there is an acceptance that flaming meteors do not rain down on a regular basis.

I find the attitude of some women to FE to be very surprising actually. For example statistically only a minority of women orgasm during intercourse, about 25%-30% from memory, but I know a lot of women fall into the trap of thinking there is something wrong that they cant, they imagine themselves in a minority when the reverse is true. That I can understand and sympathise with.

But FE, different story. As Lurcio observed 'the emphasis within certain circles of trying to persuade women that their orgasms are not good enough'. While plenty of men might be disappointed their partners do not obviously orgasm during intercourse and plenty of women may nosily fake it for a mans sake, FE as a means to that is not on male radar, not even as a UFO.

I think the porn laws are about urine, not about whether women can be relied on to accurately report their own sexual experiences.

I don't have much experience of porn, but I imagine if the urine law was removed, porn wouldn't be suddenly be full of people pissing all over each other. Hence, I don't really 'get' the law.

As for whether FE exists, it does. I can state that categorically. I can also state that not only have there been studies that show some ejaculate comes from a gland that is broadly equivalent to the prostate and is similar to male ejaculate, but if there is anything over a few mls, it's from the bladder. Even someone with a rudimentary knowledge of biology knows there isn't some extra vessel up there that can hold a cupful of fluid. Transvaginal scans have shown that 'squirters' rapidly refill their bladders during arousal, even if they start off with a totally empty bladder. There aren't any magic tubes coming from anywhere but the kidneys to fill the bladder. They also release ejaculate from the gland (sorry, can't remember what it's called) so it is something more sophisticated than 'arousal induced incontinence'.

Thank you for the posts, Lurcio. I, too, feel this is just another stick to hit women with. I loved everything you said.

Lurcio: Interesting post. I have PMd you about an upcoming event you might find interesting which is very much along the lines of what you posted - a discussion of erotica, consent, etc.
I agree with you that some porn is proscriptive but bloody hell so is practially every form of entertainment aimed at women. It doesn't mean that all of it is. Chicklit, for example, is widely derided as being all about the importance of finding a husband, yet many individual novels labelled as such carry all sorts of encouraging and even feminist messages.

FWIW on the subject of women's 'rape fantasies' this has been something I have discussed and thought about on and off over the years. I think one aspect of why they appeal to women is that lingering idea that 'good girls don't do sex' and so the thrill is in having sex but being absolved of responsibility and avoiding the label of 'bad' ie sexually active woman. Another factor might be the appeal of having a (highly desirable) man absolutely deranged with desire and unable to control himself. In my younger days that aspect kind of appealed to me, in fantasies (ie I am so spectacularly wonderful that no man could possibly resist me etc.)

And I am derailing my own bloody thread now.

I never understand the stats about so few women orgasming from intercourse. Surely if they cant they just use clitoral stimulation during and then will be able to? I expect if is extremely rare not to orgasm then.

Creambun - when people talk about few women orgasming from PIV, they are talking about penetration alone with no additional stimulation. AFAIK, Masters and Johnson were the first people to investigate this, precisely because porn and erotica generally portray penetrative sex that way, and it turns out that most women don't work that way. And even decades after this, popular culture (both porn and commercially produced women's written erotica whether chicklit or Harlequin or whatever) often has a proscriptive take on describing what goes on in bed, and it typically idealises the version of intercourse in which the woman comes just due to the power of the almight male cock. And unfortunately, there are women who either don't realise that you can just shove a hand down there (his, hers), use a cock ring, or whatever, or do realise, but feel inadequate about it because there's this huge propaganda about "properly sexually responsive women respond to the mighty cock and nothing else".

Yes, of course some women come with PIV alone (or do so occasionally but not regularly), but most of us need extra stimulation - but ask yourself how often you've seen this written about in fiction? Part of this is to do with the fact that writers of erotica are aiming for what one of my fellow fan-ficcers describes as "idealised realism" - you leave out the bits where your nail snags in the condom as you're putting it on, and in the resulting faff, he loses his erection (actually, I don't - I find trying to write realistic sex scenes is far more interesting). But why, in the "idealising process", does mainstream chick-lit leave out stimulation of the clitoris (other than as part of foreplay?) rather than seeking to eroticise it during PIV?

SGB - thanks for the details of that event! Sorry, the derail about rape fantasies was probably mine to start with, but I think it's an interesting one, and one that I've talked about at great length with fellow fanficcers. As you say, partly it is used as a shorthand for overwhelming passion (piggybacking on the rape myth that rapist rape because they're driven to it by short skirts... and baggy jogging bottoms, and shapeless jeans, and... well, that'll be because they're not "driven" to it at all), and also because of the confused "nice girls don't" hangover of our Christian past, whereby the only way a woman can have guilt free sex is to be "overpowered" (I read an eye-opening, but very sad blog post by a woman who'd escaped from an extreme Christian sect, bordering on cult. Not only was her adolescence "no sex", they took the "Whoever looks on a woman with lust in his heart..." verse so literally they were all expected to police their internal fantasy life - with the result that as an adult woman she found rape fantasies were the only way she could reach orgasm. She felt she'd been robbed of the ability to have a sex life she felt comfortable with, that integrated with the rest of her personality. And what was even sadder were teh BLT comments from others in similar situations - post after post saying "I thought it was just me! Thank you for telling me you feel the same. How the hell do we sort our heads out?") The other issue is one of Stockholm syndrome, either on a personal or on a cultural scale - we live surrounded by the threat of male sexual violence (that 6% who don't come with the mark of Cain on their foreheads). One way of dealing with it (not a healthy way, but cognitive dissonance rarely is) is to eroticise it: the actual rape becomes a fantasy in which eventually the rapist proves so erotic that the sex becomes consensual and he becomes tamed. Of course, it's a crock of shit, but an understandable if extremely dangerous one (dangerous in that it perpetuates rape myths).

I would say in rl there would be very few women who do not realise that clitoral stimulation during is important. When I was a teen a fair few years ago we were all aware of this even as young teens. I remember it was always written in cosmo and more which we all started reading aged 12/13.

Adding to this I think for a lot of women who are in their late 20s/early 30s now grew up in an era where female pleasure/orgasm is essential. We all had rabbits at 17/18 as they were the new thing. We all knew about cock rings and masturbation as they were frequently discussed. I think maybe my generation were at the forefront of this as they weren't willing to put up with substandard sexual experiences.

And hooray for Cosmo on this one! But it still leaves unanswered the question I posed: why, if this is how it really works, and we all (or almost all) know this is how it really works, is sex not portrayed that way in fiction/porn? Because I feel the fact that it isn't is politically very revealing: clitoral stimulation during intercourse is treated the same way as, say, condom use - one of those annoying little details that we know we have to do in the real world, but let's just air-brush it out of the idealised version because actually it's a bit of a chore and not the main event. Which leaves me thinking "who is this 'we'?" Because surely if the 'we' encompassed women and their erotic fantasy life, clitoral stimulation would be an integral part of the main event, and would therefore appear in erotic descriptions of it. The fact that it's airbrushed out to me is very informative of the extent to which the packaged and commercially marketed forms of our sexuality, in the form of porn and written erotica, are driven by a (narrowly defined - NAMALT) male version of sexuality. Even sex scenes in chick-lit, written by women and marketed to women, typically (in my experience) leave this aspect of penetrative sex out.

And if this propaganda isn't working (and I do see it as a form of propaganda, undermining women's confidence in their own sexual responses), why do we get women writing into the Guardian saying "what can I do to orgasm by PIV"? And why does the response not say anywhere "you know, it's perfectly okay, and normal (in the statistical sense) not to do so, why don't you just use your or his fingers at the same time?" I mean, you'd have thought this was the bloody obvious response, but no, Stephenson witters on about finding the precise angle while on top, and looking for your g-spot, not the obvious answer of "use fingers, there is nothing wrong with using fingers as well". I really do think that we're indoctrinated to believe there's a hierarchy of orgasms, and if you don't reach yours the "correct" way, then you are somehow inferior and less sexually responsive (I also think it's part and parcel of the "cool girl" phenomenon).

Cross post - I'm a couple of decades older, and believe me, we thought sexual pleasure was pretty essential back in the 80s too! Each generation believes itself to be the first generation to have discovered that sex can be pleasurable, and thinks the previous generation "lay back and thought of England", but it isn't so .

But what I'm trying to get at is the disconnect between what we know female reality to be like and what wider culture tells us female reality ought to be like - because it's that disconnect which is politically interesting.

Yy Lurcio. Clitoral stimulation is like going to the loo or something - we know the characters do it but the author doesn't want to describe it!

IME mainstream chicklit isn't that explicit at all - I'd certainly say if a character orgasmed but wouldn't necessarily go into (fnar) whether it happened before, during or after penetration.

Interestingly, in old-fashioned romance (eg Mills & Boon) there tends (or used to anyway) be a massive focus on women deriving pleasure from foreplay, but almost exclusively confined to above the waist - so he kisses her and she feels the first urgent stirrings of desire, he nibbles her neck and she writhes in pleasure, he progresses to her taut, rosebud-like nipples and she's gagging for his mighty cock.

I don't read much erotica but it's pretty good about describing clitoral stimulation, no? Especially if you like having your clit thrashed with a riding crop, cheers for that EL James.

It must be because porn is produced mostly for men - hence emphasis on things pleasurable for him. I don't think many women are that interested in it. On the other hand Mills and Boon was mostly for women - hence a bit more emphasis on elements pleasurable for her within the bounds of what was considered respectable for a mainstream publisher. Why do you thing men as much more interested in porn than women?

Adding to this I think for a lot of women who are in their late 20s/early 30s now grew up in an era where female pleasure/orgasm is essential.

Yep. I think as cosmo readership got younger and younger it basically finished its job of liberating expectations of female sexual pleasure. While cosmo still exists its now openly mocked in net circles for its bad sex advice. For young women its really the age of Tinder now, not Mills and Boon or Cosmo. I really feel that FE, as an idea, is some kind of last gasp of an old guard trying to sell something to young women who have simply moved beyond such quaint notions they should need or be expected to give a damn about it.

In the erotic fanfic I read, the standard for vanilla sex tends to be that the woman orgasms at least once through cunnilingus and moves on to PIV sex either at the cusp of the second orgasm so that she comes with a penis inside her, or after the second orgasm. She will then have a third orgasm with the aid of either participant's fingers. The three to one female to male orgasm ratio seems to be the formula.

Holly: that seems fairly standard in erotic fiction, as well. Another thing that's interesting (and even more OT) is that the biggest, er, growth area in erotic fiction aimed at women is stuff featuring men having sex with each other. The amount of erotic romance which is about men having sex (and falling in love with) other men, and which is written by women for women is fairly massive. So erotic fiction is very definitely not all about PIV as the main event.
(I like to write sex scenes that don't feature PIV; one of my books depicts a relationship between a woman and a cross-dressing man who never have any actual sex with one another...)

Holly - absolutely. The sheer formulaic nature of it has me going "oh not again!"

And yy to the prevalence of slash, SGB (though I'm not sure I'd describe it as a growth area (moving swiftly past the double-entendre) - it's been a mainstream staple of erotic fanfic since the first 'zines in the 70s, and arguably, in its non-explicit form, that's what Mary Renault's novels are all about). What I find fascinating is that some of the best examples of it are written by gay women (in fact, wasn't Renault gay?) And it has its scripts and cliches too - one very good writer wrote a spoof about the order in which things had to be done - fully clothed frottage, followed by hand job, followed by fellatio, followed by anal sex (every bit as formulaic as the 3 orgasms recipe Holly mentions). The other thing (disappointingly) is some of the stuff written by het women for other het women, which seems to insist on translating the worst gender stereotypes of the Harlequin/Mills and Boon genre into slash (tends to go together with a preoccupation with who goes on top - the "bottom" is always described with feminine characteristics, and not in a good way). At its most extreme there's a whole sub-genre which I have no time for called alpha-omega dynamics (basically, think of "Mars and Venus" with added sex scene, and everyone has penises).

The other thing that's interesting about amateur fanfic is that you can attract quite a lot of vitriol for writing independent, intelligent women who call the man on his bad behaviour rather than swooning into his arms - there are a lot of readers out there who like the whole eroticisation of female submission crap.